From: "Grant Penton" <>
> Would I be way off base in considering Chicago's very early albums (say,
up through #5) as prog? There certainly seemed to be all the elements there.
Sure Paul! I enjoyed Chicago's early LPs and was lucky to find the first
7 (excluding the boxed set) for 3/$1 sales, and made a great c-110
compilation. Agreed the 6th was weak, but there's some great instrumentals on
the 7th featuring synth and mellotron that I included. For the uninitiated,
the 1rst was Chicago Transitory, a double release from '68 which included a
tape of "the whole world's watching!" clip from the Dem. convention demos.
Featuring a fusion of Gershwin-influenced melodies, thrashy blues and tight
brass arrangements similar to Ekseption's, they developed an often proggy
extended set of transition passages through the next few LPs, Chicago (double
'70), Chicago 3 (double, '71) & Chicago 5 ('72- yeah the one with the "Sat.
in the park" jolly tune, but there's lot besides that including a tribute to
Varese). If you forget the singles, there's lots for the picking! Check 'em
out in your local dollar store!
From: "Craig Shipley" <>
Personally, I would put Chicago into the same category that I put later
Supertramp: pop band that occasionally shows signs of progginess... "If You
Leave Me Now" is in the same category as "In The Air Tonight"; capable of
inducing violent behavior towards the device playing the tune...
From: Christopher Robbin <>
Early Chicago: Yeah, I just recently got into them, and I really dig the
first four albums. Chicago Transit Authority (not Transitory as someone else
suggested) is a pretty cool debut. The melodies on some of the songs are very
poppy, but a lot of the material goes WAAAAAAAAAAAY beyond pop. South
California Purples and Prologue/Someday are both AWESOME tracks, as is
Liberation (the extended instrumental that closes the album). Chicago II
(they had to shorten the damn under duress, as then Chicago mayor Richard
Daly threatened to sue the group) also has some great songs, including 25 Or
6 To 4, as well as Ballet For A Girl From Buchanan (an extended suite of
songs that wasn't identified as such until the the live album that I'll get
to in a minute), and It Better End My Soon. Prelude/AM Mourning/PM
Mourning/Memories Of Love is a seriously more profoundly "romantic" than any
of their drecky mid 80's hit like Hard Habit To Break (totally saddens me
that Peter Cetera would eventually stoop to singing garbage like that). Fancy
Colours is also a cool song, too. Chicago III has some cool songs on it too,
but my favorite thing is the Elegy suite, which seems to occupy all of what
used to be side 4. As everyone knows, any GOOD 70's rock group followed their
first 3 studio albums with a double live album. But how do you follow 3
double studio albums? With, a QUADRUPLE live LP, packaged in a box, of
course!!!! And Chicago really deliver the goods. The 15 minute version of
South California Purples contains some TOTALLY burning guitar work from the
late Terry Kath (too bad he didn't know as much about gun safety as he did
about guitar playing!), along with excellent live versions of the complete
Ballet For A Girl In Buchanan and It Better End Soon suites. There's also an
otherwise unreleased song called A Song For Richard (And His Friends),
apparently advising the then President of the US to give up. I don't have any
of their albums after that, except for Chicago VII, which my mom picked up
for me on vinyl, pretty clean copy, at a library sale for 50 cents I think,
it even had the iron on included, unused too!!!!!
From: Chris Richards <>
Subject: Re: Chicago- prog or not?
<>>
Well, in general I consider such concepts as psychedelic and fusion
(though there's usually more funk influences than rock influences in that
stuff) to fall into a the general umbrella of progressive rock. Therefore,
I'd say the early Chicago albums would be prog. Not just the CTA album,
either. Their first five albums (as well as Chicago VII...I don't have the
sixth one yet) all have some very prog-ish moments. Check out Prelude/AM
Mourning/PM Mourning/Memories Of Love from Chicago II, or Elegy on Chicago
III. Another favorite is pretty much the entire first half hour of Chicago
VII, which is all instrumental. There's even a little Mellotron there on
Prelude To Aire.